Dr. James Leon began the course with an introduction of what
driving psychology entails. In his lecture, he provided personal accounts to
illustrate what drove him to pursue a career researching the psychology of
driving. He went on explaining how he is one of the most educated Psychologists
on the topic of driving, specifically aggressive driving. One of the key points
he made in his lecture involved the idea that most of the time people are
unaware that they are bad drivers, and in fact are quick to point the finger at
other drivers.

The most vital piece of information that we discussed was the
concept of the three-fold self of the driver. This states that personality is
defined in terms of built-up repertoires of basic habits. The acquisition
process occurs in three distinct domains: affective, cognitive and sensorimotor, also known as perceptual motor. We can only
study our behavior and modify our behavior through the use of the three-fold
self of the driver model. This model is represented by a chart with each domain
separated from the other. However, the model assumes that all domains are going
on simultaneously. Driving behavior occurs in a sequence: affective, cognitive
and then ending in sensorimotor. The sensorimotor domain includes sense organs therefore; it is
the only part of this model that is subject to legal issues since physical
aspects are measurable.

Another important concept that we discussed was the
“genetics” of driving behavior and how studies show that parents’ driving style
predicts their children’s driving style. It was said that the backseat of a car
is a road rage nursery. Social learning is a part of culture. We learn behavior
from our environments. So the idea that parents lay
the foundation to driving behavior is something that shouldn’t be taken
lightly.

Section 2: Team
Presentation on Readings

Road Rage
Chapter 1 pg.21-45: Driving in the Age of Rage

Road Rage: Real or media
hype?

In
1996, the media began to write stories about violent highway incidents. The
expression “road rage” was introduced to the public via media, however there is
no agreed upon definition. A possible definition could be “an extreme state of
anger that often precipitates aggressive behavior, sometimes restricted to
words and gestures, sometimes as assault and battery.”

Factors influencing
increase in Road Rage:

1.
Traffic congestion

2.
Feeling endangered

3.
Being insulted

4.
Frustration

5.
Time pressure

6.
Fatigue

7.
Competitiveness

8.
Lapses in attention

In
the late 1980’s, talk about Road Rage went up, as did aggressive driving.
However, the number of deaths due to crashes went down 50,000 per year in the
50s and 60s compared to 40,000 in the 1980s and 90s. This change could be due
to: 1.improvements in safety and design, 2. Seat belt and child seat restraint
legislation, 3. Improved highway engineering, and 4. Expansion of
limited-access divided highways.

Today:

Death
toll remains at approx. 40,000 year

Crash
injuries: 6 million per year

Cost
to society: $250 billion per year

Aggressive
drivers kill 2-4 times more people than drunk drivers. There is a sort of
justification they feel in doing so. This statistic really highlights the
aggressive driving being faced in our country, as well as around the world.

Worldwide Phenomenon

Research
at University of Southampton
in New Zealand:

Out
of 526 motorists:

1.
Approximately 2 in 3 (64%) said that overall, the behavior of motorists has
changed for the worst in recent years.

2.
Percent that experienced aggressive driving in the last 12 months:

62%
tailgating

59%
lights flashed at them in annoyance

48%
rude gestures

21%
someone deliberately obstructed/prevented them from maneuvering

3.
Men received nearly 10% more highway abuse than women. 12% were more likely to
experience an aggressive incident.

4.
Of the men that admitted to aggressive driving, 45% flashed lights, 22% made
rude gestures, 6% tailgated someone, and 5% deliberately obstructed/prevented
someone from maneuvering.

5.
Younger drivers are more aggressive, 76%, versus 34% of people over 44.

This
research suggests that road rage really is on a global scale. It’s interesting
to note that men as well as younger drivers are seen as more aggressive. More
importantly this research suggests that we really do have a problem that needs
to be addressed. Dr. James’ three fold approach could really benefit many
drivers.

Culture of disrespect

It’s
estimated that “there are billions of road rage exchanges annually among the
177 million U.S.
drivers. There are 1,200 road rage assault-and-battery incidents reported each
year by the police.”

Each
road rage scenarios involve two symptoms: a) feeling of rage accompanied by
mental violence, and b) the desire to punish and retaliate.

As
the book notes, young men tend to drive more aggressively. They are responding
to “their ritual opposition in their struggles for status.” With this
mentality, there is an unrealistic expectation of other drivers. As a society,
we have to remember that there are many people on the roads: the inexperienced,
impaired, and unsure drivers. By respecting others and driving with care, I
think a lot of road rage could be avoided.

Aggressive
behavior has its roots in an individual’s motives. These motives can be seen as
“the sum of the forces that drive an individual to commit a violent act.”

Learned
negativity is characteristic of this generation. We have a “get ahead in the
world no matter the cost” mentality that stems into our driving habits. The
media portrays drivers behaving badly as fun and exhilarating. With no consequences
for the recklessness, it’s easy to see why people emulate these bad driving
habits.

The Anger Choice

Anger
is a habit that can be modified.

“The
aggressiveness in road rage is a behavioral strategy used to enforce domination
of a stranger-someone who is seen as deserving punishment for having
inconvenienced us, or for having placed us in danger out of stupidity,
incompetence, or a lack of consideration or caring.” This idea makes complete
sense. The car is just an extension of one’s ego. So, for someone who feels
there ego has been threatened, it makes sense that they would retaliate.

Although
Freud may have argued for venting, today we know that it actually increases
stress and depresses the immune system functioning.

If
we realize the driver’s prime directive is to stay in control of the vehicle
and of the situation, we can see that we give up control by responding in kind.

Developing Emotional
Literacy

By
understanding Dr. Jame’s three step program involving
the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor skills,
drivers can become aware and begin to monitor their emotions and thoughts
behind the wheel.

It’s
important to realize that road rage injures on many levels. The injury we cause
others is threefold:

1.
Injury to their cars and bodies

2.
Injury to their mental state and happiness

3.
Injury to the nation by contributing to social conflict and disunity

Personality Tests

“Your Road Rage Tendency” and “Winning and Losing in the
Driving Game” quizzes can help someone see if they have road rage tendencies.
However, the results can be biased because the test taker may see himself or
herself as a good driver.

15.
Lack of Emotional Intelligence- untrained, or under-trained, in cognitive and
affective skills

Road Rage and Aggressive
Driving

The
roadway environment has become more hostile and dangerous over the years, which
in turn leads to an increase in traffic and transportation regulations. Media and the World Wide Web have proven
that there is evidence of aggressive driving. Activists groups promote the
involvement of citizens in promoting and reporting license plates of aggressive
drivers.

However,
personal research done by Dr. Leon James indicates that rather than deviant
behavior, aggressive driving is a culture
norm. Much of our driving behavior is acquired from our parents. The
backseats of cars act as the classroom for driving behavior.

Surveys
found that men drive more aggressively than women and manifest road-rage
symptoms more regularly. However, popular surveys show that a growing number of women are engaging in
aggressive driving behavior and are involved in a higher rate of non-fatal
collisions than men. Women in the workplace and having to make more ‘stops’ are
attributed to the rise of aggressiveness in women’s driving behavior.

People’s
unwillingness to scrutinize their own conduct and preference to put blame on
other drivers is one of the major reasons that highways have become unsafe.
This egocentric phenomenon can be
seen in specific forms of aggressive behavior. The denial for the need of
improvement is part of being an aggressive driver.

Driver Self-Witnessing

This
technique was done to obtain reliable data on events in the private world of
drivers. Since people report on the activities and mental focus in their daily
lives, this method is meaningful. Much discrimination takes place when drivers
spontaneously monitor themselves in different dimensions. Interviews and
self-assessments yield retrospective data in which the respondents’
recollection of facts is mixed with their self-image as drivers. By contrast,
self-witnessing reports yield data that are present, on going and concurrent.

The Driver’s Threefold
Self

Personality
defined in terms of built-up repertoires of basic habits. Skills
and errors that can be modified through further learning. The
acquisition process occurs in three distinct domains:

Extreme Irrational
Thought Sequences- paranoiac thinking that one is being followed or inspected

Article 1

Article
1 focused on bad driving behavior seen on TV, movies, cartoons, music videos,
and car commercials. A list of shows is presented and then rated using the DBB
ratings which was developed by students of Dr. James. From this article, the
hope is that people will see the danger of these shows’ activities.

We
found this article very interesting. Many people fail to realize the impact
media has on their lives. Most importantly, it’s necessary to separate the
fictitious world from the real one.

Section 3: Team
Presentation on Exercises

a) Main
ideas

The Threefold-Self
including:

Aggressive driving
behaviors in the three domains:

Affective= hostile feelings

Cognitive= biased thoughts

Sensorimotor=aggressive
actions

Driver behavior as
skills and errors in the three domains:

SKILLS

AFFECTIVE

COGNITIVE

SENSORIMOTOR

I've
got to be careful here. Don't want to cut anybody off.

This
person looks like he's in a hurry to get in. I better let him in.

(Waving
and smiling) Go ahead

ERRORS

AFFECTIVE

COGNITIVE

SENSORIMOTOR

I
wish I could give that guy a piece of my mind.

I
don't think people like that should be allowed on the road

(Yelling)
"You stupid idiot, why don't you watch where you're going!"

How do Americans define
aggressive driving?

Global
Strategy Group between June 29 and July 2, 1999 conducted a nationally
representative telephone survey of 998 adult licensed drivers in order to
determine how Americans define aggressive driving behavior.

Top
five answers:

1. Tailgating88%

2. Making
rude gestures86%

3. Passing on shoulder83%

4. Failing to yield to merging
traffic83%

5. Pulling into a space someone else
is waiting for80%

Least:

Driving 10mph or slower under the
speed limit26%

115 People die each day
from traffic crashes

About
115 people die each day from traffic crashes in the United States. Nearly 42,000 people
die each year from traffic crashes, sending 4 million more to the emergency
room and hospitalizing 400,000, half of which are left with permanent
disabilities.

Motorists,
Non-motorists Killed in Crashes

Description

2005

2006

Change

Pct. Change

Total

43,510

42,642

868

-2

Passenger Vehicles

31,549

30,521

-1,028

-3.3

Passenger Cars

18,512

17,800

-712

-3.8

Light Trucks

13,037

12,712

-316

-2.4

Large Trucks

804

805

1

0.1

Motorcycles

4,576

4,810

234

5.1

Pedestrians

4,892

4,784

108

-2.2

Pedalcyclists

786

773

-13

-1.7

Other/Unknown

186

183

-3

-1.6

Source: National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration

Motorists,
Non-motorists Injured in Crashes

Description

2005

2006

Change

Pct. Change

Total

2,669,000

2,575,000

124,000

-4.6

Passenger Vehicles

2,446,000

2,331,000

-115,000

-4.7

Passenger Cars

1,573,000

1,475,000

-98,000

-6.2

Light Trucks

872,000

857,000

-15,000

-1.7

Large Trucks

27,000

23,000

-4,000

-1.5

Motorcycles

87,000

88,000

1,000

1.1

Pedestrians

64,000

61,000

-3,000

-4.7

Pedalcyclists

45,000

44,000

-1,000

-2.2

Other/Unknown

8,000

7,000

1,000

-13

Source: National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration

These
statistics above indicate people who have been killed or injured in motorist
and non-motorist crashes during the years of 2005 and 2006. This data suggests
that there was a positive change in motorcycle incidents. What the number
suggests to me is that there is a need for speed in our society. Though there
may be some sign of improvement on the roadways, there are still many people
being affected by road rage.

b)
Procedure and Interpretation

This
exercise called for educating ourselves with all the information provided on DrDriving’s Page of Facts at http://drdriving.org/facts/index.htm.
Statistics that were found to be the most important and entertaining were
selected to be presented to the class. Each set of facts presented was
dissected into various psychological factors that may have been involved in
order to find out why those things were happening. Each statistic was tied to the
threefold self of the driver and how each dimension (affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor) could have produced these statistics.

c) Better
justification of ideas

More
allotted time to present would have allowed us to have a wider window to go
into detail on the main ideas that were included in our exercise. Due to the
time constraint, we were not able to go into detail on a lot of the information
that we had originally planned on. However, having visual aids on both the
chalkboard and handouts were found to be effective in getting our points
across. Since we had a great deal of information to share with the class, we
felt that breaking it down into various sections and having it up for the class
to go along decreased the anxiety of taking it in all at once.

d) Success
of approach

Choosing
the most important and entertaining information and statistics on DrDriving’s Page of Facts to present to the class was
successful because it prevented the class from becoming overwhelmed with
useless information. We broke down the information in order for the class to
have a better grasp on understanding the main ideas. As a team, we focused on
various psychological factors that may have been involved in the production of
these statistics. Another success to our approach was creating a short verbal
quiz for the class to participate in. This gave the class a chance to get
involved with the presentation and hopefully gave them a better understanding
of what was being presented.

e)
Improvements

The
instructions on the procedure of this exercise were straightforward. However,
there were parts that seemed to be a bit ambiguous. Depending on an individual,
various interpretations of the instructions could have been made. For example,
we were to select statistics that were found to be most important for people to
know about. This was a little vague because of ‘importance’ in terms of what
exactly? Importance in terms of social norms?Importance in terms of traffic reduction?Importance
in terms of individual knowledge and growth? In sum, the instructions to
this exercise could have been explained more specifically.

f)
Limitations of exercises

The
most crucial limitation of this exercise was having all the data located on DrDriving’s Page of Facts. Considering the fact that there
was a mass amount of facts and statistics provided, it was difficult to consume
it all at once. We believe that having hard copies (print outs or textbooks)
could have lessened the anxiety.

g) What
happened when we performed the exercises?

Since
this was our group presentation we had to really master the data and formulate
a plan to present the information to the class. It was a bit challenging at
first because this was our very first presentation of the semester but as time
went on we got the hang of it. Having to learn all the information online was
difficult but printing out the most essential information proved to be much
more helpful in putting everything together in the end.

This
site is a collaboration of various enforcement agencies, including The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Included on this site is the
identification of the problem, goals and objectives to reduce the amount of
aggressive driving accidents, suggestions, examples, and media activities that
all relate to this growing problem in society today.

The
aim of this study was to examine the relationship between personality factors
assessed during adolescence and persistent risky driving behavior and traffic
crash involvement among young adults. The results of this study suggest that
road-safety interventions seeking to deter young adult males from persistent
risky driving behavior need to be directed at those who do not endorse
traditional views, are aggressive, and feel alienated from the rest of society.

This
site provides tons of information on driving, everything from driver safety to
where your state DMV is located. I found the driving statistics to be the most
interesting because it really shows you how poor driving is impacting our
country.

This
article supports the conclusion that men are more likely to be aggressive
drivers. The title of the piece is called “Are you a dangerous driver?” In the
article, he mentions different types of reckless driving such as tailgating and
then offers statistics to support his conclusions.

This
site offers road rage advice and tips on how to avoid road rage, statistics,
road rage articles, road rage tests, and even causes to road rage. There are a
few outside related links dealing with this phenomenon. What we found most
interesting on this site was the ability to file a report on dangerous drivers
and have their information posted in the site for others to see. Having a
discussion board also helps people become more involved by speaking their minds
and reading in on the minds of others.

This
site includes various topics related to road rage some of which include
behavior dealing with aggressive driving and behavior dealing with speeding.
Other driver’s topics that are included are autos, behavior, driving,
enforcement, environment, licensing, safety, technology, etc. All of these
topics relate to our lecture in some way. So this site has everything included
on one site.

This
site includes information on how to avoid aggressive driving. It contains three
different sections including “don’t offend,” “don’t engage,” and “adjust your
attitude.”We believe that these three
topics are essential in the fight against aggressive driving. People think that
they know enough to cope with the situation but things are much more
complicated than it seems. This site is short and to the point.

Influences
on youthful driving behavior and their potential for guiding interventions to
reduce crashes

This
site is an organized, comprehensive view of the factors known to influence
young drivers’ behavior and how those factors might inform interventions to
reduce crashes. A framework of six categories of influences on youthful driving
behavior was developed, including the following elements: driving ability,
developmental factors, personality factors, demographics, the perceived
environment, and the driving environment. It is apparent that a complex set of
many different factors influences young drivers’ behavior. To reduce crashes,
comprehensive, multilevel interventions are needed that target those factors in
the framework that are amenable to change.

In
this lecture we learned a lot about how parents are the main influences on how
driving behavior is formed. We learned that the backseat of a car that is
driven by our parents acts as the classroom for how we end up driving as
adults. We found this site to be helpful in a sense that it provides useful
information on teen driving. This site presents the fact that teens are 9 times
more likely to be involved in accidents.The Teen Safe Driver Program provides American Family Insurance
customers a proven approach to help new teen drivers improve their driving.

Children
inherit their parents’ driving habits both through genetic disposition and
model learning. Due to life style and other exposure factors, studies show that
parents and their children’s traffic convictions and accidents correlate one
another. This study aimed at investigating the relationships between parents’
and their children’s self-reported driving behavior. We found this site to be
helpful in a sense that it really goes into detail on the genetics of driving
behavior and where aggressive driving really starts.